National Catholic Reporter - August 16-29, 2013http://ncronline.org/issues/august-16-29-2013
enEmbracing humilityhttp://ncronline.org/blogs/spiritual-reflections/embracing-humility
<span class="field field-name-field-byline field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden">
Patricia Datchuck Sánchez </span>
<span class="field field-name-field-blog-column field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden">
Spiritual Reflections </span>
<section class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden">
<p>Today, God’s word speaks to us through Sirach and the Lucan Jesus -- and the theme of this word is humility. “Humility” is derived from the Latin word <em>humus</em> or earth; the humble person has his or her feet on the ground. Levelheaded and truthful, those with humility are not the center of their own universe. Rather, they are centered on God and on others.<br /><br /><img alt="CEL_Sept012013.jpg" src="/sites/default/files/CEL_Sept012013.jpg" style="width: 180px; height: 180px; border-width: 0px; border-style: solid; margin: 5px; float: right;" /></p> </section>
Sat, 31 Aug 2013 11:00:00 +0000Anonymous57711 at http://ncronline.orgEverything is sacredhttp://ncronline.org/blogs/spiritual-reflections/everything-sacred
<span class="field field-name-field-byline field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden">
Roger Karban </span>
<span class="field field-name-field-blog-column field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden">
Spiritual Reflections </span>
<section class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden">
<p>Most of us dread hearing the central words of today’s Hebrews pericope: “Do not disdain the discipline of the Lord or lose heart when reproved by him; for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines, he scourges every [child] he acknowledges. ... At times, all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it.”<br /><br /><img alt="Cel08252013.jpg" src="/sites/default/files/Cel08252013.jpg" style="width: 180px; height: 180px; border-width: 0px; border-style: solid; margin: 5px; float: right;" /></p> </section>
Sat, 24 Aug 2013 11:00:00 +0000Anonymous57706 at http://ncronline.orgCrossing the color line through solidarityhttp://ncronline.org/books/2013/08/crossing-color-line-through-solidarity
<span class="field field-name-field-byline field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden">
<a href="/authors/arlene-montevecchio">Arlene Montevecchio</a> </span>
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p><img alt="08162013p17phb.jpg" src="/sites/default/files/08162013p17phb.jpg" style="width: 120px; height: 180px; border-width: 0px; border-style: solid; margin: 5px; float: left;" />HOPE SINGS, SO BEAUTIFUL: GRACED ENCOUNTERS ACROSS THE COLOR LINE<br />
By Christopher Pramuk<br />
Published by Liturgical Press, $19.95<br /><br />
Christopher Pramuk is a theologian with the writing style of a mystical novelist and the concerns of a social ethicist. He is devoted to promoting racial solidarity in an age of increasingly complex global systems, and his striking work captures the spiritual significance of racial consciousness for individuals and communities. His new book, <em>Hope Sings, So Beautiful</em>, includes a photo that connects my own conversion to solidarity with his.<br /><br />
For years, the photograph, “Girls Praying During Church Service, Port-au-Prince, Haiti,” was taped to my office door. In high school, I’d worked at a camp for adopted Haitian children and wanted to go to Haiti to learn, grow, and be in solidarity with its people. Pramuk and his wife traveled to Haiti as prospective adopted parents. They have created a family with four children, two adopted and two biological.<br /><br />
Pramuk posits racism as “the symptom of a profound poverty, a terrible captivity.” Through others’ theological and spiritual writings -- most notably of Frs. Bryan Massingale and Thomas Merton -- through the artistic works of Billie Holiday and Stevie Wonder, and the activist practices of Franciscan Sr. Thea Bowman, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Taos Indians, Pramuk cultivates a new vision for white and black Christians.<br /><br />
Among the greatest challenges Pramuk poses to his readers is a call to conversion through mutual risks and responsibilities. Whites and blacks must confront their own histories, suspicions and tensions at all levels -- and “cross geographic, economic, and racial boundaries in order to simply be present to one another’s experiences, to celebrate them and, indeed, sometimes to mourn them.”<br /><br />
Persons of privilege, regardless of color, must confront the structures and systems that perpetuate the -isms and inequality: “Whose sins are being paid for as we build more and bigger prisons, fill them with young black and Latino men, and staff them with working class whites who desperately need the jobs?”<br /><br />
Pramuk asks the hard questions and gives potential answers to the problem of racism within the Christian community through examples of reconciliation: mere presence, shared worship, art and practices of resistance and hospitality to a society fueled not by solidarity but by competition and attempts to fill spiritual voids with consumerism, sex, technology and violence.<br /><br />
Though racial difference and human dignity is the primary theme of <em>Hope Sings, So Beautiful</em>, Pramuk also takes up discrimination against homosexual persons and the tensions present between church hierarchy and lay faithful on a number of issues. These topics are welcome additions to his overall frameworks of solidarity and sacramentality. Though the book includes the voices of women, there could have been more emphasis on feminist contributions to racial reconciliation, as well as a greater call for wealthy Christians to examine the connections between race and inequality.<br /><br />
Pramuk’s purpose is nonetheless clear and compelling and will captivate the reader with his own graced encounter across the color line: “At issue here is not foremost the ‘individual rights’ of peoples of color, women, or gays in the church as an extension or microcosm of liberal democratic society. Rather it is the vocation to theological wholeness and integrity in the church that ought to be out ahead of the game, leavening a secular society by its visible embodiment of love, justice, and unity-in-difference.”<br /><br />
In 2012 and 2013, my dream came true. I co-led a group of students to Port-au-Prince for an immersion trip that took me to metal art communities, refugee tent camps, schools, churches, clinics and AIDS orphanages. Pramuk’s book has helped me reflect on my own graced encounter across the color line. Questioning middle-class stability, inequality among nation states, and segregation among our churches and neighborhoods is, indeed, a more risky way of life, but also a more hopeful way of life rooted in the reign of God.<br /><br />
[Arlene Montevecchio is a doctoral student of theology at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. She writes from Erie, Pa., where she lives with her husband and two sons.]</p>
</div></div></div>Wed, 21 Aug 2013 11:00:00 +0000Anonymous57701 at http://ncronline.orgArchbishop Chaput's right-wing funkhttp://ncronline.org/news/faith-parish/archbishop-chaputs-right-wing-funk
<span class="field field-name-field-byline field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden">
Charles J. Reid Jr. </span>
<span class="field field-name-field-slug field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden">
Viewpoint </span>
<section class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden">
<p><strong>Opinion:</strong> Let's focus on what it means to be an evangelical church: For some time now, the church has been turning in upon itself.</p>
</section>
Sat, 17 Aug 2013 11:00:00 +0000Anonymous57696 at http://ncronline.orgQuestioning together: Young adults celebrate teaching liturgy on retreathttp://ncronline.org/news/spirituality/questioning-together-young-adults-celebrate-teaching-liturgy-retreat
<span class="field field-name-field-byline field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden">
Loretta E. Johnson </span>
<span class="field field-name-field-slug field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden">
Essay </span>
<section class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden">
<p style="margin-left:.1in;">We’ve completed undergraduate degrees at prestigious universities. We’ve served in communities around the world as members of the armed forces, the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and Teach for America. We aren’t sure if our jobs will turn into lifelong careers. We’re living at home with our parents after completing our master’s degrees or before venturing out for our next step. We’re in the first few years of marriage, hoping to bring a child into our family or becoming parents for the first time.</p> </section>
Fri, 16 Aug 2013 11:00:00 +0000Anonymous57656 at http://ncronline.orgDon't stop praying, don't break the fasthttp://ncronline.org/blogs/my-table-spread/dont-stop-praying-dont-break-fast
<span class="field field-name-field-byline field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden">
Melissa Musick Nussbaum </span>
<span class="field field-name-field-blog-column field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden">
My Table Is Spread </span>
<section class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden">
<p>Just a year after the Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration fled the Waldo Canyon fire threatening their mountain convent outside Colorado Springs, Colo., they are home and celebrating. On March 27, Pope Francis recognized a miracle attributed to their founder, Mother Maria Theresia Bonzel, paving the way for her beatification Nov. 10. Her cause marks a series of firsts: Bonzel was one of those named in Francis' first act as pope concerning the causes of saints. The miracle associated with Bonzel is the first Vatican-investigated and -approved miracle in Colorado Springs.</p> </section>
Wed, 14 Aug 2013 11:00:00 +0000Anonymous57686 at http://ncronline.orgEditorial: Becoming a 'messy' church under Pope Francishttp://ncronline.org/news/spirituality/editorial-becoming-messy-church-under-pope-francis
<span class="field field-name-field-byline field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden">
NCR Editorial Staff </span>
<span class="field field-name-field-slug field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden">
Editorial </span>
<section class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden">
<p>One line from Pope Francis' impromptu news conference with reporters aboard the papal plane as it flew from Brazil to Rome last month quickly became a setup for comedians around the world.</p>
<p>Responding to a question about gay priests, Francis said, now famously, "If they accept the Lord and have goodwill, who am I to judge them?"</p>
<p>Comedians, unable to resist this setup from the ultimate straight man, responded: "Who are you to judge? You're the pope. Judging is in your job description."</p> </section>
Tue, 13 Aug 2013 11:00:00 +0000Anonymous57681 at http://ncronline.orgCatholic congresswoman Lindy Boggs dies at 97http://ncronline.org/news/people/catholic-congresswoman-lindy-boggs-dies-97
<span class="field field-name-field-byline field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden">
Christine Bordelon </span>
<span class="field field-name-field-byline field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden">
Catholic News Service </span>
<span class="field field-name-field-location field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden">
New Orleans </span>
<section class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden">
<p>Corinne “Lindy” Boggs, who blazed a trail from her birth in 1916 on a Louisiana sugar plantation to being an eight-time-elected member of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, was “a strong and loud and constant voice for life,” New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond said at her funeral Mass Aug. 1 at St. Louis Cathedral.<br /><br /></p> </section>
Tue, 13 Aug 2013 11:00:00 +0000Anonymous57676 at http://ncronline.org'Doing nothing' a place of surprising activityhttp://ncronline.org/blogs/soul-seeing/doing-nothing-place-surprising-activity
<span class="field field-name-field-byline field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden">
Michael Leach </span>
<span class="field field-name-field-blog-column field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden">
Soul Seeing </span>
<section class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden">
<p><em>"You can't get better. There's no better. But fortunately there's no worse either." -- Steven Harrison</em></p> </section>
Tue, 13 Aug 2013 11:00:00 +0000Anonymous57666 at http://ncronline.orgFrancis in Brazil a tale of four tripshttp://ncronline.org/news/vatican/francis-brazil-tale-four-trips
<span class="field field-name-field-byline field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden">
John L. Allen Jr. </span>
<div class="field field-name-field-feature-series field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">World Youth Day 2013</div></div></div>
<span class="field field-name-field-slug field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden">
Analysis </span>
<span class="field field-name-field-location field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden">
Rio de Janeiro </span>
<section class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden">
<p><strong>Analysis: </strong>Pope Francis made only one trip to Brazil to mark World Youth Day. Existentially, however, the outing was actually more akin to four trips in one.</p>
</section>
Mon, 12 Aug 2013 11:00:00 +0000Anonymous57661 at http://ncronline.org